


that dreamers often lie

by bookoftheazuresky



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Belial is an incubus and that's bad, Belial torturing Sandalphon, Blood and Gore, Charm magic, Dreamwalking, M/M, Non-Consensual Kissing, Restraints, Sandalphon's Carnival of Bad Dreams, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, dream!Lucifer - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 03:53:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14708576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookoftheazuresky/pseuds/bookoftheazuresky
Summary: I am dreaming, Sandalphon told himself, straining against his bonds in the featureless void. The sensation of being wrapped in another primal’s power, someone walking through his sleeping mind, wasn’t completely unfamiliar—the war had come with its share of debilitating injuries, and it was often easier for a healer to hold their patient unconscious while they worked. But this was not nearly so benign.





	that dreamers often lie

**Author's Note:**

> Believe it or not, I actually started this before the magna ii came out. It was going to be an excuse to have Sandalphon snuggles. As you can see, this is not that fic.
> 
> Much thanks to meadowlarked for the beta and for egging me on when I pitched the idea of Belial torturing Sandy to her. Title is a quote from Romeo and Juliet.

_I am dreaming_ , Sandalphon told himself, straining against his bonds in the featureless void. The sensation of being wrapped in another primal’s power, someone walking through his sleeping mind, wasn’t completely unfamiliar—the war had come with its share of debilitating injuries, and it was often easier for a healer to hold their patient unconscious while they worked. But this was not nearly so benign.

Sandalphon snarled, trying to dredge up enough power to claw his way free of what seemed like solid air. It didn’t work. He had no more to draw on than an archangel’s strength—not inconsiderable, but not enough when pitted directly against that of a primarch.

“Energetic,” Belial purred in his ear. Sandalphon reflexively tried to hit him only to strain a muscle in his neck. “I like that.”

“Go kill yourself,” Sandalphon snapped, refusing to try and crane his neck to look at the other primal.

“You should try being more friendly,” Belial told him, voice insinuating. “Catch more flies with honey and all that.”

Sandalphon snorted. “Friends with who? You? Nonsense.” He let his voice edge into cruelty. “I don’t know why you seem to think I’d crawl in bed with some Astral’s _pet_ , anyway. Did you forget which side I’m on?”

“Oh, but you _would_ crawl into bed with the _right_ Astral’s pet.” Belial walked out from behind him, fingers weaving into dark feathers as he granted Sandalphon a twisted smile. The void surrounding them was beginning to lighten, patches of color taking on coherent shape.

It was familiar, and Sandalphon gritted his teeth at it. _Of course this is what he would taunt you with_ , he told himself. _Just focus on what he’ll look like when you cut his wings off and kick him all the way down to the Crimson Horizon._

“No response?” Belial wondered aloud, and Sandalphon realized he’d forgotten what the other primal had even said. “Well, I don’t think anyone would believe you _weren’t_ dying to have Lucifer fuck the traitor out of you.”

“What.”

Belial laughed. “It’s actually pretty funny how thirsty you were. All he’d have had to do was crook a finger and you’d have come _running_. Pretty stupid of him not to see it. Think of all the lives he could have saved during the war, if he’d just had the brains to realize you didn’t care about anything but getting his attention!”

Sandalphon’s lip curled in a sneer, as he shoved the sting of the assessment down and let anger take its place. “You’re disgusting.”

“Did you ever,” Belial leaned in, smiling like a sickle and smelling of dying flowers and rotting meat, “offer to worship at his altar? Kneel and do reverence? Pray-“

“I’m going to find you,” Sandalphon interrupted. “And I’m going to cut you into pieces. Slowly. Your tongue is going to be _first._ ”

Belial leaned just that little bit closer and licked his cheek. It provoked a useless jerk and another snarl. “Ooo, kinky.” He finally backed off, walking through what was undeniably the sanctuary at Canaan. “Hold that thought, though.”

Sandalphon drew a breath, closing his eyes and steeling himself, and searched harder for a flaw in the power that bound him still and dreaming. He’d been one of the slipperiest assassins of the war for a reason, and it had a lot more to do with skill than power.

He lost everything, concentration, thought, and strength, when he heard a familiar voice whimper. _Don’t look, you’ll regret it, DON’T LOOK._

“You’re not going to appreciate my show?” Belial asked, audibly on the edge of laughter. Sandalphon sank his nails into his palms at another pained sound. His much-too-educated ear identified it as coming from a throat already raw from screaming. He’d heard that quality all too often in the labs where he had been created and wouldn’t mistake it.

Belial made a faux-thoughtful hum. “No, I should have known you wouldn’t be the voyeuristic type. You’re more hands-on, aren’t you?”

Useless pleas tripped to the tip of Sandalphon’s tongue. He bit his lip until he tasted blood to keep from speaking them. Begging Belial to stop would be just as futile as begging Lucilius had been. And unlike Lucilius, Belial would actively get off on hearing them.

“You’re so pretty with your face screwed up like that,” Belial purred. Sandalphon could hear his footsteps get closer, the sound of a bleeding body being dragged—it had a wetter slide to it, instead of a scrape. “I bet I can get even better faces though.”

Sandalphon wracked his brain for the most cutting thing he could possibly say, the words that would make Belial the angriest, that might shake his control. “You know, it’s always struck me as strange that the ever-elegant Lucilius, who always took _such pride_ in the aesthetics of his work, would produce something as _tacky_ as you. He never _did_ include you in his curriculum vitae, a distinction which even I managed. One could imagine that this is… _jealousy_.” Sandalphon put emphasis and amusement on the last word in equal parts.

“And yet I was a primarch and _you_ were a failure,” Belial said, not even a ghost of amusement in _his_ words. It seemed that Sandalphon had aimed correctly, eyes closed or not. “Remind me who threw a temper tantrum last year about not being created with a purpose?”

Sandalphon smirked, the bite on his lip pulling painfully. “Which of us really had it worse? Lucilius only made you to appeal to the _fallen_. You think he would have just welcomed you back with open arms, the proof of his traitorous schemes? At least _I’m_ not delusional about my discardability.”

“We’re all discardable. Even your precious Lucifer, in the end.” Sandalphon lost all the breath in his lungs in a rush of grief, of helpless anger. Belial leaned closer, his breath smelling of sweet liquor, of decaying corpses decked with funeral wreaths. His voice was an unbearable temptation: “Don’t you want to see him again?”

Sandalphon opened his eyes. Belial’s enchantment crawled in his veins, slowing his comprehension down like his brain had been dipped in syrup. It felt nice, relaxing. He looked down into Lucifer’s blue, blue eyes, pale lashes clotted with blood.

Belial’s hand was wrapped around the Supreme Primarch’s throat, bruised black and purple under his fingers. The same fingermarks marched down Lucifer’s bare arms, were blazoned on his chin in the patterns of careless gripping hands. His black undershirt was striped with the marks of a flaying whip, leaving patches soaked with blood. And if his shirt was soaked, his pants were dripping with it, enough blood to send even primals (Lucilius had checked) into fits of reeling weakness, barely able to lift their heads.

“Let him GO!” Sandalphon’s throat burned with the force of his scream, his body finally shedding Belial’s charm like water. Lucifer made a weak noise, eyes fluttering closed.

“Hmm. How about no?” Belial smiled at Sandalphon, then turned and kissed Lucifer, a lewd invasion of tongue and biting teeth. Lucifer was choking almost at once through the unyielding grip on his throat and Belial refusing to let him breathe. Sandalphon fought his bonds with all the strength in his body, forgetting all finesse in the _need_ to escape, to get Belial’s hands off Lucifer.

Stymied, Sandalphon resorted to cursing Belial with all his remaining breath, a muddle learned from Astral researchers and skydwellers and Pandemonium residents alike. Belial was laughing by the time he pulled back, lips marked with blood.

“Creative,” Belial purred, and forced a kiss on Sandalphon in turn, blood mingling with his rot and alcohol taste. Another wave of charm left Sandalphon lightheaded with desire while his heart pounded with horror. The breaking was quicker this time, his magic _shoving_ the foreign power out of his pores, but Belial drew back too quickly for a bite. Sandalphon could taste him to the back of his throat. He gagged helplessly.

“ _So_ pretty,” Belial crooned approvingly. “Virgins always are. I love it when they get that horrified look on their faces…!” He hefted Lucifer from the growing puddle of the primarch’s own blood and pushed him against Sandalphon. The white-haired angel tried to stop himself but was too weak to do more than clutch at Sandalphon’s trailing skirts as Belial shoved him into Sandalphon’s hip. Patches of red bloomed on the white cloth.

“Might as well get rid of that.” The dark primarch snapped his fingers with a performer’s flourish, and Sandalphon was in his dark leggings and white undershirt. “Damn,” Belial said admiringly, “you’re stacked. I’d never have guessed from all that covering up you do.”

Sandalphon, wordless, snarled like the Pandemonium-dweller he was, a sound no human or untainted angel could produce.

“Hot,” Belial commented. He grabbed Lucifer by the back of his neck, smearing blood all over Sandalphon’s clothes as he pushed the white-haired angel’s face against Sandalphon’s stomach. “Don’t you think so, Luci?”

Lucifer sobbed, a knife to Sandalphon’s core. “Please,” he croaked, his voice ruined and wet. “P-please, no…”

A peal of dark laughter shook Belial’s feather-clad shoulders. “Yes.” He raked nails down the red-flayed-broken expanse of Lucifer’s de-winged back and _smiled_ as Lucifer screamed.

Sandalphon panted, near hysteria, his chest rising and falling in sharp, jagged motions. Wetness gathered at the corners of his eyes. Belial crooned wordlessly at him, another wave of his magic relaxing Sandalphon’s body enough that Belial could force his blood-coated fingers into Sandalphon’s slack mouth. The traitor angel gagged around the intrusion, body seizing uselessly to try and force them out. Rough, warm fingers caressed Sandalphon’s hip, ran up his back, tracing ripples of hateful pleasure over his skin.

Sandalphon wished that Pandemonium had clawed deeper into his body, that he had fangs or poison like some of his kin, instead of the taste of Lucifer’s blood and Belial’s unwelcome fingers and magic on his tongue.

“I’m gonna give you a choice, Sandy,” Belial said conversationally, as if Sandalphon weren’t struggling to breathe past his gag reflex. “You can either watch me fuck Luci here in front of you, or I can fuck _you_ in front of _him._ You get to pick which. If you don’t, well…” Belial smirked, “I’ll just have to get _creative_. I don’t think you’d like it.” He finally pulled his fingers free, leaving strings of saliva dripping from his fingers and Sandalphon’s mouth. He wiped it off on Lucifer’s ragged shirt, prompting another sound of pain.

Sandalphon coughed, leaning forward as far as his invisible bonds would let him. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. It was too much, he’d rather _die._

“Well, Sandy? I’m waiting.” Lucifer shivered against his legs, fingers digging weakly into Sandalphon’s increasingly blood-stained leggings.

(Delicate fingers slid over his temples, cupped his cheeks. _Sandalphon?_ )

Sandalphon quivered like a plucked bowstring, like a dying bird. He was shaking down to his core with horror. “I…”

(The delicate hands dropped from his face to his breast, just above his core. He could almost recognize the voice this time. _Sandalphon._ )

“I won’t…” _Let you hurt him any more_. The words stuck in his throat, but he would make himself say them.

(Hands fisted on his breastbone. This time he could hear her.)

_Sandalphon!_

Sandalphon and Belial both jerked as the girl in blue’s voice echoed through the dream space. It felt like she had closed her hands around his core and pulled, a hard jerk that snapped the bonds that held him. Sandalphon grabbed back with all the strength he could muster, clinging to her like an anchor. He reached instinctively for Lucifer, hands moving at last to clutch at him, only for the image—and the dream—to fracture into pieces around him.

Belial’s mocking laughter followed him as Sandalphon screamed himself awake.

...

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Sandalphon, I’m so sorry!” Lyria babbled from where she was pushed behind the captain and Katalina, who both had their swords in hand despite their nightclothes. Sandalphon barely heard her past the roar of blood in his ears and the increasingly hysterical breaths that clawed their way into his lungs. Each one wound him tighter until at last one cracked the very last of his control and he buried his face in his hands with a choked-off wail.

He hadn’t cried for…well, since before Pandemonium probably. It was not any more pleasant now than it had been then. Sandalphon felt like he’d been run through with every huge sob that wracked his body, ripped open with horror and grief and rage.

Katalina said, nearly at his ear, “Hold still.” She touched his shoulder lightly, just with her fingertips, but it was enough to make him jerk away, a fresh spike of terror at the unwelcome touch nearly making him gag.

“No,” he croaked, flinching away when it looked like she might try again. It didn’t matter that he could probably kill her with his bare hands, all he could feel was Belial’s touch, Lucifer’s blood, all over his skin.

“Are you injured?” Katalina asked with clipped professionalism. He shook his head, even though he was numb and tingling all over and had no idea if it were true. It wasn’t like he could see past the tears in his eyes for a visual inspection. “You’re sweating, and your color is awful,” Katalina told him. “You look like you’re going into shock.”

In one of the later battles of the Astral War, Sandalphon had gotten a cracked skull while in aerial combat, blacked out from the blow, and then broken most of the bones in his legs when he’d hit the ground from the fall. He’d come to with bones poking out of his skin in several places. Angels weren’t built to die from anything short of core damage. However bad he looked now, he’d survived worse.

“For goodness sake, Lyria,” Katalina said, turning slightly. The blue-haired girl had snuck up behind her, and was looking intently at Sandalphon.

“Let me try, Katalina,” she insisted. Katalina reluctantly let her step closer, and Lyria reached out with a small hand.

Lyria’s touch was the cool, healing waters of Auguste. It tasted of salt…and tears.

But it loosened all his tight muscles, leaving him wrung-out and exhausted instead of strung tight.

A fine edge of tension bled out of the blue-haired girl’s face. Sandalphon couldn’t bring himself to be mad when she said, “You feel a little better now.”

“If he’s feeling better, maybe he can tell us why you felt the need to come tearing down here at,” Katalina squinted in the direction of the small window, “three hours past midnight.”

A long moment of silence fell. Sandalphon clenched his hands in the hopelessly tangled sheets, breathing through his nose to ward off panic.

“You were dreaming, weren’t you, Sandalphon?” Lyria asked tentatively, fingers tapping together in an unconscious mimicry of her summoning posture. “But not exactly.”

“Not exactly?” the singularity asked, finally resheathing her sword and coming to stand by the end of the bed. Her brandy-brown eyes were too focused for the hour and her lacy camisole and capris.

“Primal beasts are…” Lyria paused, groping for words. “When I touch them, I can see into them, a little. And when I do that, I can talk to them. I think it’s a little like how Rosetta and Yggdrasil can talk to each other. So I should have been able to talk to Sandalphon when I touched him.”

“You should have been able to wake him up, you mean,” the singularity stated.

Lyria smiled at her. “Right.” Her expression faded back to concern. “But something was keeping me from getting through to him. I could see a little of his dreams, but…”

“It was Belial.” That couldn’t be his voice. He sounded like Lucilius had cut his throat open and stitched it back closed.

The singularity shifted. “Belial, that demon primarch?”

Sandalphon thought, a little vaguely, of correcting her on her primal beast terminology—demon and primarch were mutually exclusive categories—but nodded instead.

“The demon primarch was _in your dreams?!_ ” Djeeta said sharply, leaning forward. She looked abruptly at Lyria and asked, “Can you feel him now, Lyria?”

The blue haired girl shook her head. “No, whenever I woke Sandalphon up it disappeared.”

The singularity straightened back up, looking both relived and concerned. She shared a glance with Katalina. “What was the dream about?” she asked finally, as if wary of the answer. When Sandalphon didn’t reply, she asked, “Lyria?”

The girl in blue looked a little white around the edges, but replied, “Belial was hurting him. I don’t know exactly what it was, but Belial wanted him to hurt, he liked it. That was the feeling I got.”

Katalina put her hand on the girl’s shoulder and shared another speaking look with the singularity.

The singularity pursed her lips and seemed to come to a decision. "All right, you two head back to bed. I can handle it from here. Thank you,” she addressed Lyria specifically, “for helping.”

"Handle it how?" Katalina asked, somewhere between curiosity and suspicion. The suspicion was mainly directed at Sandalphon, which was fair. Though he couldn't imagine what she thought she could do against a primarch if something happened.

The singularity raised her blonde brows and made a shooing motion. "Go on. It's not like the window in here is big enough for him to throw me out of."

"Djeeta!" Katalina spluttered.

Lyria patted him on the shoulder and said, with determination behind it, "It'll be fine." It was unclear if she was talking to him or Katalina or both. She walked to the door and looked at Katalina expectantly.

The swordswoman looked torn, but finally she acquiesced to the girls' expectant looks. "If you need anything...," she said just before leaving. Djeeta made an affirmative gesture.

The singularity addressed him, "Come on, get up."

"Why?" He was aching in every joint as fatigue settled in.

"My bed is bigger."

Sandalphon blinked at her for a long moment, then raised his brows. "I may have spent the last who-knows-how-long in Pandemonium, but I'm pretty sure 'sharing a bed' still has meanings other than the literal."

Djeeta snorted. "Not only do you look like death warmed over right now, you kicked me off an island. No one is _that_ cute." She flicked him on the ear and said chidingly when he winced, "Besides, idiot, I'm really worried. Hearing that Belial is torturing you in your sleep is extremely concerning. Making sure that you don't sleep alone while we figure this out is the smart thing to do."

"I could just not sleep," Sandalphon suggested half-seriously, rubbing his ear. Sleeping ever again sounded like something apocryphal.

The singularity looked unimpressed "When do angels start hallucinating from lack of sleep?"

Sandalphon actually knew that one. "About two and a half weeks. They tested it. It was unpleasant."

" _Astrals_ ," the singularity said, like it was a curse. Sandalphon completely agreed with the sentiment. "In the interests of you being functional, I'm going to insist," the singularity told him firmly.

"Fine." He didn't really want to stay in here anyway. It smelt of terror and despair. He untangled himself from the blankets with some difficulty. The singularity picked up her sword and grabbed his arm with her other hand. Pride told him to smack it away, but even after Lyria's healing he was still shaky and cold. 

Besides, he'd thrown her off an island. It wasn't like she had a good opinion of him to lose.

The singularity seemed pleasantly surprised that he let himself lean on her. "Tomorrow we'll talk to Morphe and Phoebe about Belial. We'll get this taken care of."

Sandalphon was too tired to manage his usual sarcasm. "I believe you."

 


End file.
